Employment Growth

[beachmouse]

I'm still finding it kind of weird that $250K counts as affordable housing. A couple years back we had an intern at work who was retraining in IT after she lost her job in a textile mill closing. Even then, there was talk about building better affordable housing, and that modular development in Freeport (I want to say Bear Creek) came up for discussion. Decent but not extravagent for somewhere in the $90-$120K range. She thought it was pretty insane to call that affordable because most of the people she knew in the Freeport-Bruce area couldn't afford to pay more than $60-$70K for housing.

Granted this was before the days of exotic loans and such, but I'd put the non-select service worker affordable housing price point somewhere in the $125K range.

Florida Trend has their annual economic yearbook issue out, and it's mostly online if anyone is curious. State's still getting a net population gain of 1060 people a day, and everyone still seems cautiously optimistic.

Per capita income 2006
Bay- $28,799
Gulf- $20,419
Okaloosa- $34,309
Walton- $21,327
State Average- $33,814

2006 Population totals and average annual growth rate 2002-2006
Bay- 161,626 1.49%
Gulf- 15,697 1.36%
Okaloosa- 190,270 2.04%
Walton- 50,115 3.06%
State 17,894,089 1.75%

 

[Cork On the Ocean]

Psssst, Cork, I moved over to the lounge... I'm not supposed to be on this thread anymore. But let me just say "useful information, Cork, especially the part about finding the house for that couple..." (don't tell our friends in the lounge that I came back to this thread)


>>>>>>>>>>>>> lounge

Kind of hard to remain real anonymous here but my lips are sealed. Real estate thread lured me back but I must move back to the lounge for my sanity :rofl:

 

[Cork On the Ocean]

I'm still finding it kind of weird that $250K counts as affordable housing. Decent but not extravagent for somewhere in the $90-$120K range. She thought it was pretty insane to call that affordable because most of the people she knew in the Freeport-Bruce area couldn't afford to pay more than $60-$70K for housing.

Granted this was before the days of exotic loans and such, but I'd put the non-select service worker affordable housing price point somewhere in the $125K range.

Florida Trend has their annual economic yearbook issue out, and it's mostly online if anyone is curious. State's still getting a net population gain of 1060 people a day, and everyone still seems cautiously optimistic.

Per capita income 2006
Bay- $28,799
Gulf- $20,419
Okaloosa- $34,309
Walton- $21,327
State Average- $33,814

Oh, I agree Beachmouse. My first home was CLEARWATER for $17,000 Brand new! I bought it with $2,000 down. Just did a quick search for homes under $125K and surprisingly Escambia county had quite a few SFH's (Pensacola, Gulfbreeze and Navarre) Surprising because these are coastal areas.
Areas around destin, S walton are pretty much mobiles in that range but there are quite a few homes north of 98. Of note, there are know newer homes in that price range which is sad.

Land cost is not the only problem. Construction costs are also an issue. Even at $100/sq foot which is half of average in our area, a tiny 800 sq foot home would cost $80,000 to construct ($120K for 1200 sq ft-construction only) Add land cost, permitting, profit for the builder - that $125K is getting further and further away. I have a developer that I work with and I'm begging him to do affordable housing but he says it's just not worth it financially. I could sell the heck out of them everyday but he says he can't build them. These prefab homes may be the only way to go for housing in that range. No clue how much they cost to build. Anybody?

Even rents for this population is a problem. Can you imagine how hard it would be to pay $800/month (9600/yr) on a $15,000 per year income?

Regarding average income data. It would be interesting to know how they get this data. Is it only full-time residents. How bout all the people that have 2 homes? Where are their higher incomes captured? In our counties, I would think that we have a much higher full time resident rate inland where the incomes are lower or perhaps skewed in some way with so many farmers. Looking at the coast, we have more non-residents than residents to contribute to the total income. When more people move to Walton beaches full time, such as they have in Destin, I suspect our average will go up like it is in Okaloosa. This doesn't help those that are below the average.